Lost in Dreaming
by GougeAway
Summary: He did save her. Not when it mattered, of course. But after that. Lots of times, and in thousands of different ways. Every night he saves her - only to realise, after all these years, that Beth's still the one saving him. [Bethyl chapter-fic. Very, very slight Caryl, but don't be fooled - this is a big fat Bethyl story and it ends that way.]
1. Chapter 1

**Lost in Dreaming  
**_One_

* * *

"Need help with that?"

Daryl finds her on the farm.

He looks up from his spot on the ground and towards the steps of the front porch, and Beth's sitting there. A white painted fence forms a border around the house, but some of the slats are inexplicably broken and her long, jean-clad legs fill the gap; cowboy boots bouncing against the side of the porch, big blue eyes peering out at him from between the pickets.

"Nah," he replies, and hears his own gruff voice as if from far away. "M'good." He continues his task, sat cross-legged in the long, green grass; engulfed in blue skies the exact shade of her eyes. Absently, he hears birds singing.

"You sure?" Beth asks, and stops swinging her legs. The sun shines on the blonde of her hair and turns it golden, but Daryl can't help but think, suddenly, that she looks cold. "It might hurt someone."

"This?" he scoffs, and looks down at the harmless piece of wood he's carving with a sharp piece of slate. "Ain't nothin'."

She scoffs in return. "If you say so, Mr. Dixon." He looks up at her then, but there's something so old and knowing in her young face that he has to look away. He looks back down to the wooden carving in his hand, but before he can remember what he's making he hears the ominous creak of the barn door swinging open, and the sounds of the birds grow louder.

He's not sure when Beth came to be standing in front of him, but when he looks up at her, there's a faraway look in her gaze. She's looking away from him, somewhere over his shoulder, and he dare not follow suit.

"You were like me," she whispers, her voice almost lost in the birdsong, and it's only now that he realises there were never any birds – no singing, no calling – just the shouts. Just that old Beth's sobs when her mother and brother fall to the ground. Just Carol's screams when her little girl emerges from the darkness of the barn.

"Look," she breathes, so he does. He sees his own hunched shoulders, feels his own old grief flooding the air from one thousand feet away, and feels hers too. And they look so similar in that moment, this old Beth and old Daryl - so cut from the same cloth, that he doesn't know how he could possibly have missed her then. It's a scene from someone else's lifetime, so he looks back to Beth instead – _his_ Beth, not that poor, young thing cradling her dead mother in her arms – and when she smiles down at him something in his chest aches inexplicably.

"You were like me," she says, but the grief is gone from her voice now, and she talks instead as though fondly admonishing an old friend. "And now God forbid you ever let anyone get too close."

* * *

They bury Beth between two trees on the outskirts of a field behind the Greene farm. Maggie directs Michonne distractedly from the front seat of a stolen police car all the way from Atlanta. Her directions are quiet, her responses short, and from Daryl's position in the backseat of the car all he can think in a moment of hopeless grief is that _it's her own damn fault._

It's strange when they arrive. Their five cop cars roll up an overgrown path and enclose on a farm house that Daryl thought would have burned to the ground years ago. There's something eerie about seeing it standing there, silent. It's worse for wear, sure; there's a gaping, burned out hole in the right side of the house and he can see through what used to be the living room. The remains of the front door lie on the floor just inside the house, hinges completely severed, and he can see the blackened, ugly scars on the peeling white paint of the exterior. The walkers had moved on years ago, leaving destruction in their wake, and yet this house had remained standing, defiant in the face of it all. An inexplicable lump forms in his throat, and a strangled laugh tries to push its way past it at how horribly fitting it all is – that they'd bury _her_ here, strong and defiant and _good _as the house she grew up in.

And if not for the splintered pine and the destroyed picket fence and the door lying defeated on the ground, this house would look just as it had in his dream. He shivers despite the heat and casts his eyes to where Beth had sat on the porch, legs swinging and blue eyes watching, but his gaze falls on an empty space. His eyes begin to prickle with heat and he has to look away.

Daryl's not sure how long he's been standing there, but when Rick's voice carries on the wind from somewhere behind him, he turns his head over his shoulder and feels an old curl of dread form in the pit of his stomach.

They're standing near the spot where the barn used to be. Nature has been steadily reclaiming its territory, but beneath the mounds of weeds and wildflowers he can make out the blackened husks of wood and ash, like an old wound festering beneath a band aid. Nausea coils in his stomach, so he tears his eyes from the sight and looks instead towards Rick, Glenn and Maggie, standing beneath a large oak tree. Maggie's face is in her hands, and this time when that flare of anger courses through him at the sight of her, he can't help but also feel guilty.

"Here?" Glenn asks her quietly, as Daryl makes his way towards the trio. It dawns on him that this is where they buried Sophia, and where they buried Beth's mom and brother, but those wooden crosses are gone; carried away beneath the dragging feet of a hundred walkers, and he can't tell precisely where those peaceful dead lie now.

Maggie shakes her head through her sobs. "I don't know," she breathes, and when her voice stumbles over her next words, Daryl's anger at Maggie dissipates a little, and his heart clenches tightly in his chest with pity for her. "I can't find them," she sobs. "I don't know where they are anymore." And when Maggie can't bear for that ground to be dug up yet again, when she cannot face the fear that a shovel may accidentally catch upon her brother's lifeless arms or her mother's unsmiling mouth, Daryl understands.

And so they bury Beth between two trees on the outskirts of a field behind her house – two weeping willows where Beth and Shaun would once-upon-a-time play hide and seek from an irate teenage Maggie. When Shaun got too old for games, she'd come out and climb these trees alone, and when she got a little older herself she'd sit right here in this space, covered in the shade of the leaves above her, and read book after book beneath sweltering summer skies. Maggie tells him this as they lower the body into the ground, blonde hair forming a halo around her small shoulders, blue eyes closed forever. When it's done Carol comes to stand beside him, places one hand on his shoulder and wraps her other arm around one of his, but he can barely feel anything through the deafening numbness coursing just beneath his skin.

Maggie stands opposite him on the other side of the grave, face wet with tears, her shoulders shaking with every shuddering breath despite Glenn's grip on her arms. Rick and Carl stand beside them, eyes shining with tears, while Michonne holds Judith, her face sombre. Judith cries then; lets out a long, heartbreaking wail – and Daryl knows she's just young, too young to understand what's going on or maybe even to remember Beth's face, but he can't help but imagine in that moment that the little girl is crying out for the first mother she ever knew. Tyreese stands on Carol's other side, a hand on her shoulder, and Sasha beside him. Abraham's group and Tara stand respectfully a little ways off; a sad, steady presence despite Daryl's certainty that the world is crumbling around him. Gabriel speaks a quiet prayer over the newly turned earth, and through the pounding head ache wrought from too many tears, Daryl imagines a younger Beth sitting up there in the branches of the trees, observing casually with eyes as blue as the sky above them.

Before they leave, he follows Carol to that spot before the ghost of the barn, and she stands in the place where the shell of her daughter was shot down. They visit the overgrown green grass beneath the oak tree where, somewhere, Sophia's body lies.

Carol's eyes howl. They scream. But they are dry.

"Y'alright?" he asks, his voice catching in his throat from misuse.

"I'm okay," she tells him, and though her eyes are hollow her voice is unwavering and strong. She squeezes his hand reassuringly. "You will be too."

They leave in the police cars, and as Daryl casts just one last look from the back window, he imagines a flash of gold on the stairs of that abandoned front porch. That hollow ache that has settled in his chest tears open, ripped anew, and he can't help but think of how wrong Carol is.

* * *

Short start to my first ever Walking Dead chapter-fic! After howling for days after the mid-season finale, I just had to write something to make myself feel better, and so came the idea of Daryl gaining some closure through dreams about Beth. But for the rest of his life. So maybe not closure? Maybe just endless grieving. And pining. Wow. This is so depressing. But trust me when I tell you that the ending is really nice. :)

If you could review, I'd love you forever.

Also, let me take the time to recommend you check out apenny12, whose Walking Dead stories I have been hooked on for the longest time. Her 'For The Ones...' series and her Bethyl one-shots have kept me going through all the tough Bethyl times. She also has a new story about our OTP reuniting and it's beautiful and actually could realistically happen, and Morgan is there, and Morgan is the best, so. Y'know. You should go ahead and read her stuff.

Thanks again. Updates will be fairly frequent, since I've almost finished the last couple of chapters anyway. Anyone reading this or my other Walking Dead stories, you are absolute gems to me.

Bored of the sound of my own voice now. Stay tuned. Bye byeeee.


	2. Chapter 2

**Lost in Dreaming**

_Two_

* * *

"Need a hand with that?"

This time, he finds her at the prison. He's found her here a few times now, usually in her cell, but to find her leaning against the cool railing of the guard tower is something new.

"What? This?" he gestures at the wooden carving in his hands, and still can't remember what he's carving it into. It glints strangely in the moonlight, like metal. "Nah. S'okay."

"You sure?" Beth asks from directly beside him, her tone light and teasing, but when she turns her head just slightly to glance up at his face, there's a sadness in those eyes so haunting that Daryl gasps inaudibly. "It might hurt someone."

"It won't," he says hurriedly, desperately, because he's suddenly filled with the need to wipe that expression off her face and bring back that bright, sunny Beth he carried to the kitchen table. "It won't hurt no-one," he says, because he needs it to be true. "You're gonna be fine."

She smiles then, big and real, and her eyes shine like sapphires in the light of the moon, hair turned silver. "Okay then, Mr. Dixon," she sing-songs, and when Daryl hears a gurgling noise it's with only slight surprise that he sees baby Judith in Beth's swinging arms. A rush of affection floods his senses. Somehow this picture is perfect, and irrationally he's afraid it won't last.

"When did you get here, Lil' Ass Kicker?" he coos. Judith's tiny mouth smiles up at him, eyes shining with sheer joy.

Beth fixes him with a strange look, then. "She's not."

"Not what?"

"She's getting so big," Beth sing-songs again, and Judith gurgles happily and reaches for the end of Beth's ponytail, tiny fingers grasping.

"What you talkin' about girl?" Daryl laughs, because he's so inexplicably happy at the sight of them here, together as they should always be. "She's still just a baby."

"No," Beth says, fixing him with that _look_ again, and then turns her face back to Judith, the moon illuminating her features and making her look ethereal. "You're gonna be seven tomorrow, aren't you Judy?" she coos. "Aren't you? Yes you are!"

It's just a moment, but he drags his eyes away from Beth's face and looks out towards the forest before them, beyond the perimeter of the prison gates, stretching as far as the starless sky. Beneath that blackness is a sea of the darkest green –the deep, earthy smell of fir and pine trees, and teeming with the sounds of thousands of beasts. He's filled, then, with unexplainable longing so intense that his eyes begin to prickle with tears.

When he looks back Beth's arms are empty, and she's staring out at the forest too. Horror floods his veins.

"Where's Lil' Ass Kicker?" he breathes, and Beth's eyes are rimmed red with tears as she points over his shoulder towards what he instinctively knows is the court yard.

"I lost her there," she says, mournful. "She's not on the bus and I can't leave without her. And Maggie..."

He feels a surge of anger he doesn't understand at the sound of Maggie's name. She's done something terrible and unmentionable, something he doesn't know yet; he knows she's not done it yet because he and Beth are still in the prison, but he doesn't know why that matters. But Beth is crying, so he pushes it away.

"S'okay," he says, quickly, because he can't bear to see her look so sad. He knows, somehow, that Judith is with Rick and the others. "We've got Judy. She's safe."

"Oh!" Beth's eyes dry instantly, her face shines with relief. "Oh. That's good." She eyes him warily, though, and he feels somewhat uncomfortable.

"What?" he says, defensively, and when Beth speaks it's with a soft, gentle evenness – the tone of a mother chastising a child.

"Are you going to stop being mean to Maggie any time soon?"

He looks away from her, to his feet on the grated metal of the watchtower floor. "I ain't mean."

He feels a slim finger prod his chest, and when he looks back up he sees Beth's face looking up at him expectantly. "You weren't the only one, Daryl."

"I know," he says, but he still doesn't quite get it. Doesn't really understand what's happening here, but knows it's important. Knows that he has to be nicer to Maggie, though he's unsure right now what he's so heart wrenchingly unhappy with her over.

Beth nods her head, shoots him a quick wink of an eye, and then inclines her head towards the woods, eyes trained on Daryl's face. "We're goin' out there soon, aren't we?"

"You and me?" He feels a little nervous. He's never spent a lot of time with Beth before.

"Yeah! It'll be fun," she breathes, and her eyes glitter with mirth. "You'll be all grumpy at first, and I'll be all annoyin', but you'll get used to me quick."

"Pfft," he snorts, and shoves her playfully until she squeals. "I ain't grumpy."

"But I _was_ annoying," she smirks. She nudges his side with her bony elbow, and he feels a fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he throws one arm around her shoulder, playfully ruffling her hair before giving her a quick kiss on the top of her head.

"You weren't so bad," he says quietly into her hair, humour gone from his voice, and Beth's arm tightens around him.

* * *

"Happy birthday, Judy," he smiles as he hands the auburn-haired girl her birthday present. Her brown eyes light up in wonder as she takes the blanket wrapped bundle from his hands.

"Thank you!" she says, smile breaking across the tiny features of her face, as Rick and Carl sit on either side of her on the worn couch in the house they've called home for the last four years, smiles on their own faces.

She's grown now, walking and talking and playing with the other kids in the gated Alexandria community, as if the world outside their fortified walls doesn't exist. She's smart – funny, sometimes, and always with her nose in a book, pronouncing with ease all the biggest words that he'll never know the meanings of. And sometimes – times like now, when she cradles the world's worst-wrapped, smallest gift in her hands and still manages to be so genuinely grateful – sometimes, when she looks up at everyone with that kind, beaming smile, Daryl sees just a little bit of Beth in her, and that makes him prouder than he has words for.

"Mom!" she calls, and Daryl's heart aches just the smallest bit when Michonne breaks away from her conversation with Carol and comes to stand beside him. "Mom, Daryl got me a present!"

"He did?" Michonne asks, and prods Judith's forehead softly as the little girl breaks out in giggles. "That was very nice of him. Nice wrapping paper job, by the way," she jibes at him warm-heartedly.

"Shut up. Not like there's any gift shop around here," he playfully snaps back.

"Can I open it?"

"You go on ahead, Lil' Ass Kicker," he says fondly, and Rick shoots him a sharp look.

"How many times – " he begins, but Judith's squeal of excitement drowns out any words of admonishment her father has in store, and at the sound of her joy a grin breaks out across Rick's own face.

"A new book!" she cries, and holds it out in the air for everyone to admire. "Daryl got me a new book!"

He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. "Ain't nothin'," he says. "I see you readin' the same books over and over, is all. Just saw it on a run."

"I can't wait to read it," Judith assures him, and stands on small legs to wrap her arms around Daryl's torso. "Thanks."

And Daryl's not the hugging type. Not at all. But he thinks some remnant of his dream last night must have clung to his skin, because with a sudden rush of affection he kneels down to wrap his arms around her small frame. Because, in some way, Judith will always be that baby Beth had cradled in her arms. "You're welcome," he says, voice thick with emotion, and ruffles her hair before letting her go.

There aren't many people at Rick and Michonne's house; just their own group, a few of Judith's little friends and some of their parents. They'll never know the exact day of Judith's birth, but they'll always know the month – March, because of Lori's approximate due-date, and the residents of Alexandria have kept careful count of the passage of time since the outbreak began. It was Carl who suggested celebrating the first day of every March for her, and something always twinges uncomfortably in Daryl's chest when he remembers Carl saying that 'every kid should have a birthday.'

It's much later on, when the kids have gone home and Judith has fallen asleep face first in her piece of homemade cake, that Maggie joins him on the porch.

"Hey," he says, and shifts over enough for her to join him on the doorstep, smoke curling from his half-finished cigarette and dissipating in the evening air.

"Hi," she says, and moves towards him slowly. She's had some wine – they'd struck lucky at a store just a few miles from the safe zone a few weeks ago, and had decided to save it for special occasions – and she sways just slightly when she sits down beside him. "Having fun?"

"Yeah," he replies, and honestly, he is. He's had a little whisky, his first drink since a blonde haired girl told him he'd miss her one day, and burned down a moonshine shack with him – and truthfully, the buzz is nice. Now he's numb in that warm, comfortable way, and not in that hollow aching way he's been for quite some time now. "You doin' okay?" he asks her, and Maggie nods beside him.

"Yeah, I am," she replies, green eyes glittering as she looks out towards the quiet street beyond Rick's house.

They lapse into silence for a while. Maggie with her eyes closed and Daryl smoking his cigarette.

"It was Beth's favourite," Maggie says suddenly, and Daryl doesn't have time to steel himself before the sound of that name, _her_ name, tears and rips anew at the annoying, painful, Beth-shaped hole she's left in the centre of his being.

"The book," Maggie clarifies when he doesn't say anything. "_'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.'_ It was the first book in her favourite series."

He feels a strange swell of emotion at that; a sharp tug that seems to pull his heart from his chest and up, up into his throat, forming a lump he can barely speak over. On some level, it just plain hurts. On another, it's something of a comfort to think that despite her absence, it's almost like he's given back to Judith something of the woman who raised her for those first couple of years. That that baby Beth had loved with all her being finally has something left of her.

"I thought it was a kid's book?" he finally says, and Maggie smiles wistfully.

"She started reading them when she was a really little kid," she says. "About Judith's age. And as the books came out, she'd get older. She grew up with them, really. And by the time the last book came out, she was almost that girl you met on my farm." She fixes Daryl with a watery smile, and her eyes aren't glittering anymore; they're shining with unshed tears.

"I'm sorry," she says, and the tears fall fast from her eyes, streaming from her cheeks and creating a steady _drip drip drip_ on the concrete at her feet. There's a terrible, consuming pain in his chest at the sight of her like this, and in the sense of dread at the subject of the impending conversation, because he just _knows_. They've skirted around it for too long now, he and Maggie; caught in some endless cycle of not saying her name, of not talking about her – of filling this silence between them with everything and nothing, anything to distract from that old anger in Daryl's heart or the guilt on Maggie's shoulders.

"Don't – " he begins, but she's sobbing now, and he sits, speechless, because Maggie doesn't do this – not ever, not since the day they left the farm behind forever, left her –

"I know you were angry," she breathes, her face wet with tears, and she won't look at him anymore. "I know that you blamed me, even though you never said anythin', and you were right." She gasps for air, and her tears fall faster. "I gave up and I _lost_ her. I didn't look for her. I didn't even try and in the end I deserved to lose her but you didn't – you didn't give up – but I _let_ her be dead."

It's everything Daryl believed for years. It's everything he felt when he carried his girl out of those hospital doors and saw Maggie break down, or when she cried all the way to the farm, or when she told him those nostalgic stories as they buried the little sister she never looked for. It's all the resentment and anger he'd felt when he'd seen her mourn and grieve and fall apart – as though she had really lost Beth, and hadn't merely thrown her away. He had told her Beth was still alive, when even he couldn't know for sure, but still she had left for Washington. It didn't matter in that moment when he'd seen her there, screaming and crying on the concrete of the hospital yard, that she'd come back. That she'd realised her own mistake. Maggie was already too late. And in that moment, he hated her as much as he loved her.

And for years, there has been this disconnect between them – in the way they talk to one another, in the way they fight together like a team but avoid each other when the fights are fought and won or lost. In the way they fill the dead silence between them with small talk, rather than the things that really matter.

And for years, Daryl has missed Maggie. Misses when she was his friend, and not just his family. He wonders, now, if pain and anger are only things that resolve themselves after some great epiphany – or if, instead, they quietly pack their bags while nobody's looking, and silently slink off in the dead of night.

"Do you hate me?" she asks, eyes on the ground, bottom lip quivering, and his eyes feel hot, suddenly. He tastes salt on the corners of his mouth, and before he can stop himself he has dropped his cigarette to the ground to wrap strong arms around her; chest to her shoulder, head resting on hers as she cries.

"I don't hate you, dumbass," he says over the lump in his throat, as Maggie's hands come up to grip his arms like a lifeline. "How could I ever hate you?"

She sobs. "Back then, I thought – "

"I know," he says. "I'm sorry." He hugs her tighter, because he understands now that the rift between them wasn't ever really Maggie. The rift was him all along, angry and desperate for someone to blame. "I was just lost," he tells her. "I'm so sorry."

She cries even harder, but it feels different, somehow; something shifts back into place between them, and a weight he didn't even know he was carrying is lifted.

"What are you crying about now, you drunk-ass bitch?" he mumbles, hastily wiping his own tears away.

She snorts, and shoves him. "I'm just happy. Shut up, grumpy."

"I ain't grumpy," he laughs, and nudges her as they move to stand up.

"But I _am_ a drunk-ass bitch," she says, swaying just slightly on her feet.

"You're not so bad," he smiles, and takes hold of her elbow as they go back inside; back to the warmth, back to their family, leaving his anger out in the cold.

* * *

(A/N: I love it when Daryl and Maggie get to be friends. And also any opportunity to mention Harry Potter. Thanks for reading! Review at will darlings. xoxo)


	3. Chapter 3

**Lost in Dreaming**

_Chapter 3_

* * *

"Want my help, there?"

He finds Beth in the woods, sitting on a log across from him, blue eyes boring into his. Blonde hair matted with dirt, arms stronger and leaner, covered in cuts from thorns and with slight rips in her jeans.

He holds up the snake he's skinning in his hands, confused. "With dinner? I got it already," he answers, and continues skinning. He feels heavy, for some reason; hopeless and lost, as though something terrible has happened. He knows he's lost something invaluable; whether it's the prison or Alexandria, now, he can't be sure, but he can feel the frown on his own mouth like a weight. When he glances up at Beth again, there's something old and unending in the strange look on her face.

"Are you sure?" she asks. "It'll hurt someone."

He looks back down at the lifeless snake in his hands, but the fresh kill feels inexplicably cold against his calloused skin. His fingers skim against the metal of it's scales.

"I know," he whispers, because he feels it now, innately; knows it is dangerous, knows that if given the chance it will spring to life and devour her before his eyes. "That's why I can't let you help me."

She nods sagely, and then suddenly the real Beth is there instead, bright and shining and defiant.

"Let's go do somethin'," she says, eyes glinting in the firelight. "I don't wanna stay in this suck-ass camp anymore." Along with his unexplainable melancholy he feels a surge of nervousness, too – he doesn't know this girl all that well, and he'd honestly rather sit by this cold fire and be alone.

Only, when she suddenly isn't there, he realises how lonely being alone truly is. He stands on shaking legs, dinner forgotten; intense fear gripping his heart and flooding his veins with ice.

"Beth!"

There's no reply, and he scrambles desperately past the walker alarms strewn around their little space, trips and crawls over them before pushing himself to his knees and running through dense trees.

"BETH! BETH!"

She's not there, but he hears the moans of a thousand walkers not so far away, and then a long, bloodcurdling scream.

"I GET IT NOW! I GET IT NOW!" he hears her shout, voice almost lost in the sea of groans and shuffling footsteps. "I GET IT!"

"BETH!" He screams, horror carving a hole in his chest – he feels numb with terror, and when he tries to run through the trees towards the sound of her voice, his legs won't move. "BETH! BETH!"

_– __DARYL! DARYL! – _screams a voice, but it isn't Beth's. It tears through his ears, and yet it sounds so far away. He doesn't know why Carol's here in these woods somewhere; she doesn't belong here with him. This is _their_ place, his and Beth's forever, and he doesn't want to let her in.

"BETH!" He screams.

A piano springs to life in his head; small, nimble fingers gliding across heavy, dusty keys.

"What?"

He turns around and there she sits, elbows resting on the dusty surface of a long-forgotten bar, dirty cup in her hands as though she'd been waiting here for hours.

At the sight of her, alive and worse for wear, but _alive_, breathing, Daryl feels relief so intense that his legs almost give out from underneath him. Her disappearance is forgotten, though, when he sees the peach schnapps bottle beside her, and he scrunches up his nose. "You ain't drinking that, are ya?"

"Why not?" She throws the cup away and it smashes silently at his feet. She tilts the bottle to her lips and drinks, and when she pulls the bottle away a dark red liquid covers her mouth, dripping from her chin and on to her yellow shirt. Inexplicably, the same colour pours from her head in a steady, silent stream.

It makes him uneasy, and he moves towards her, hands reaching for her face to wipe that strange crimson away. The sounds of that unseen piano grow quieter. He can't remember the notes anymore, can't always recall them in waking life; but here he remembers every chord, every quaver, every tone. With a surge of despair he realises it's slowing, growing quieter, spiralling away from him.

_– __Daryl, Daryl, come on, Daryl, Daryl!_ – he hears Carol again. Invisible hands shake his shoulders, but Beth's right here, right in front of him, and he pushes Carol's screams away.

Beth looks up at him, eyes glittering, and though she's clean again he can still feel that blood on his hands, staining through his skin and seeping into his bones forever.

"Why are you sad?" she looks up at him worriedly, and with a sudden rush of desperation he grips her shoulders, afraid she'll disappear any minute.

"Because it's ending." He feels it deep in every fibre of his being. He hears the slow of the notes, sees her fingers on the keys in his head grow tired. He can see the coda coming just around the corner.

She keeps looking up at him, and he can't help but think that this Beth who lives in his dreams and haunts his nightmares has never looked more like _Beth_. There's a soft wonder in those blue eyes and in the gentle upwards curve of her mouth; in the hushed tone of her voice and in that southern lilt that used to make something in his chest soar.

"No," she whispers, and the look on her face is so heartbreakingly beautiful that he can't help but grip on to her tighter, afraid she'll be taken from him again. Warm hands reach upwards and cup the sides of his face; he feels his eyes flutter closed and he breathes her in. She smells like the woods; like the earth, like fresh air and something new. He breathes in a little deeper and the smoke hits his nostrils, stings just slightly but not threateningly, and he knows the world is burning around them.

When he opens his eyes again, she's still there, his face hot in her hands. The glow of the fire illuminates her features; one side cast in the shadow of the trees, the other bathed in flickering light.

Beside them, to his left and her right, their moonshine shack is burning. Flames curl around the wooden corners, the roof seems to breathe inwards as though about to fall in – the house seems to cry, but Daryl isn't sad about it. He knows that they were just there only minutes ago, that they burned it down; that those flames are burning away the last reminders of the people he and Beth used to be – that scared little boy and that weak little girl. And though from far away he hears his mother screaming inside, can almost see kids on their bikes and hear sirens and see that fire truck parked outside the remains of his house, it's the first fire that's ever made him smile.

He remembers that this was where it all really began. That this moment, right here, was where they started.

"It is," he whispers, and grips her tighter, pulls him to her, lips ghosting across the skin of her forehead. "It's ending," he says, and yet he can still hear that piano and the lilt of her voice somewhere in the back of his mind – quiet, but not quite gone.

"No, Daryl," Beth whispers, breath mingling with his in the small space between them. She smiles, and his heart aches in his chest from longing. "Your song's barely even started."

* * *

When he opens his eyes, Carol tells him that she loves him, and he finds himself saying it back.

It happens when his eyes dart open, when his lungs suck air through his gasping throat, when he sputters water and his chest heaves with exertion. It happens when Carol pulls him from a river all alone and saves him on the banks, his face wet with cold, muddied water and hers wet with tears.

Something had happened a little ways up ahead. He and Carol had wandered further afield in the never ending search for supplies, when the bridge they'd been crossing had given way beneath their jeep and they had come crashing down to meet icy water. It's not the first car accident they've been in together, but it's the first time Daryl almost didn't make it. Later, he'll remember the way fear had carved a hole in his heart, had settled there, growing more intense by the second as he tried harder and harder to pull his leg free from the wreckage trapping him inside the jeep; will remember the simultaneous hope and panic when he looked beside him and saw Carol wasn't in the driver's seat – hope that she had escaped, panic that she might not come back for him. The way the corners of his vision darkened with every bubble of air that escaped his pursed lips. The way that freezing numbness had seeped through his skin. The way everything stopped _hurting_. And the way he'd felt when he'd been transported back to those woods, with _her_, telling him that his life was only just beginning.

His chest aches, his breaths come out in wheezes, but at the sight of Carol beside him something deep within him stops and settles.

"I thought you were dead," she sobs, and she grips his hand in both of her own, forehead pressed against his knuckles. "I thought I'd – "

"S'okay," he rasps, and takes a deep breath of beautiful, clean air before he talks again. "Take more'n that. My song ain't over yet."

And then Carol tells him that she loves him, that she always has, and before she kisses him he tells her that he loves her, too.

And he does. He does love her. They've been through too much, he and Carol, for him not to. He's seen Carol as the wilting wallflower, the abused housewife; as the grieving mother and then the hardened warrior; has watched her grow from one to the next, remembers when Terminus was burning and that moment when he'd looked into her eyes but had found someone entirely different in them. Remembers how he'd known, then, that something terrible and unimaginable had happened to her – something dark and endless that had made her a survivor but had stripped something of her humanity away at the same time. And he remembers, too, how she had dropped everything to try to bring Beth back to him, how she'd grieved by his side, and how slowly, little by little, that humanity had come back to her. How his best friend had come back to him. She's been the strong, steady presence in a world falling apart at the seams, and in some way, Daryl knows, he and Carol are the same; cut from the same cloth, have lifetimes of experience in common that he's never shared with anyone before.

And he does love Carol, he realises, as he kisses her back. But it's in that moment, too, that he realises how truly, endlessly, and devastatingly he had been in love with Beth Greene. How hopelessly and powerfully he had been in love with that blonde haired girl who'd taken him from the ruins of the prison and breathed life into him just by existing; who'd taken the pieces and fragments of his life and made him a whole person.

Carol is smart and strong. She's capable and independent and caring; she makes him laugh, makes him feel like maybe the world won't end. She's the woman he _wants_ to want. He loves Carol, but he's not in love with her.

Because this love he feels for Carol pales in comparison to the way Beth made something in his chest soar whenever she smiled, or the way every graceful movement mesmerised him, or the way the sound of her voice twisted and turned inside him like a tidal wave. The way she'd laugh with surprised joy when she'd catch their meal that night, or the way she'd silently lace her fingers through his as they laid in the dark. The way he was so sure, when he'd lost her, that half of his soul was still out there, waiting for him - and the way he'd felt when he finally found it again, standing behind Carol's wheelchair between cops and doctors, blue eyes wide in her face as she looked back at him. The way it was the happiest damn moment of his entire life. The way he'd felt that they were finally one whole person again.

The way he'd felt when that woman had said Noah's name. When Beth had looked him in the eye for the briefest of seconds, that look on her face, and the way he'd _known_ – the way he felt everything inside him scream out for her as she pulled Noah into a hug and then turned her back on him forever. The way something inside him tore away and spiralled endlessly out of his reach when she had crumpled to the ground.

The way, when she died, that he'd felt half of him go with her.

And so, he stays with Carol. Because he does love her. And for the next nine years, he pretends his eyes don't absently look for a blonde head in the groups of survivors on the pristine streets of Alexandria, or that his eyes don't prickle with tears at the sound of a girl singing or that his throat doesn't clench strangely at the taste of peanut butter and jelly or diet coke.

Because his song isn't over yet, and the Beth that still lives on in his head chastises him when it becomes too hard; tells him that it's alright to let someone get too close. Tells him that the hardest thing in this world is to live in it.

So he lives in it with Carol, and he's all the better for it.

* * *

(A/N: Don't be alarmed by the Caryl thing happening here. It seems to me like a really natural progression of their relationship, but this is of course Bethyl through and through! Please feel free to read a review. You will be rewarded with the knowledge that you've made someone's day. Merry Christmas!)


	4. Chapter 4

**Lost In Dreaming**

_Chapter Four_

* * *

_A/N: _ _I've changed the summary slightly to give a bit of fair warning to any future readers, but I want to make it plain, again, that this is a BETHYL fic. There is incidental Caryl, but this story ultimately ends as - and really was, all the way through - a Bethyl fic._

_Couple things I'd like to clear up. Some of you said that in having Daryl and Carol be together, despite Daryl knowing he's really only in love with Beth, I was actually insulting Carol as a character and making her out to be stupid, weak, etc. Please understand that Carol is one of my favourite characters of any fictional world of all time. In having them be together, I'm not doing Carol any disservice. In my story, although we don't get a glimpse into Carol's head, Carol knows Daryl was/is in love with Beth and she's alright with that. "How can she be alright with that?!" etc. I do hear you._

_But also think about the world Daryl and Carol are living in and how fleeting and rare moments of happiness are. If Daryl makes her happy, and Carol makes him happy, why the hell not? There are plenty of people who get and stay together out of a sense of companionship rather than out of actual love and passion, and take into consideration that Daryl and Carol are actually the absolute best of friends. I felt that not including Caryl (I honestly hate even typing this word - believe it or not the pairing feels squicky to me too) would mean ignoring the evolution of their relationship on the show and what I think may actually be a naturally progressing pairing. Just look at the show now and tell me it's not headed for eventual Caryl (though I really, really, really hope not)._

_I also don't think I'm doing Daryl's character a disservice by showing that, like many human beings, he wants and deserves a loving relationship. It's not replacing Beth, or turning Daryl into some kind of heartless asshole. By the time Daryl and Carol get together in this story, Beth has been dead for over ten years. Not only is it in Daryl's survivalist nature to keep on living, but many people lose the love of their lives in tragic circumstances but manage to find some semblance of love again later in life. It happens to everyone, everywhere. It could most certainly happen to Daryl Dixon._

_Sorry for the essay. Please enjoy!_

* * *

"D'you need my help?"

This time, his view is of clear blue skies, and when he reaches out to his side his fingers brush against Beth's before lacing through them. Wheat and barley tickle the bare skin of his arms, and without looking he knows they're in the field they'd slept in that day, hungover from the moonshine and bathing in the sun.

"Help with what?" he mumbles. In the hand not clinging to Beth's, his fingers grasp tufts of golden grass, warm from the heat of the sun, but strangely cold and hard in the palm of his hand. Metal. "S'nothin'."

He tilts his head to look at Beth, but realises she is sitting now, fingers no longer entwined with his. And as always, when she asks the question - when she says her next line - he realises suddenly and startlingly that this thing with Beth's too blue eyes and golden hair and ivory skin is not Beth, but something older, stronger, more feral.

"Really?" it says, as it stares into him, something timeless and fathomless in its face. "It's going to hurt someone."

The words strike at something deep within him, some long-forgotten fear that eats away at him from the inside, and he knows this not-Beth is right.

"I know," he says, and grasps for her hand again. "That's why I need to keep it away from you."

It smiles, and then the real Beth is the one smiling at him instead, a full-faced grin on her lips. His other hand drops whatever cold, metal weight it was holding, and Beth's slim fingers lace through his.

"What you smilin' about Greene?" he asks, and feels the corners of his own mouth tug upwards in return at the mere sight of her. He remembers this day; remembers the feeling of the sun beating down on his bare arms, the lazy breeze that filled him with that earthy, heady scent that would always, from then on, remind him of Beth. He remembers that last night was when they had burned down a moonshine shack together and everything had changed between them, and that this day here, in this field, was the day she became the most important thing in the world to him. Beth just keeps smiling back at him, and he remembers this conversation in its entirety; feels his next words tumbling from the mouth of this younger, happier version of himself and lets it happen. "Shouldn't you be washin' puke from your hair or somethin'?"

"What?" Beth asks, smile twisting into a smirk. "I guess you just aren't used to girls smiling at you, huh?"

He swats her away lazily, but doesn't let go of her hand. "Not when they're hungover as all hell, no."

"Does that mean girls usually only smile at you when they're drunk, then?" An eyebrow arches, eyes glittering, and for the first time in a long time a genuine bark of laughter escapes him when he realises he has no response for her.

"Shut up," he says, and pushes Beth backwards before letting go of her hand. She tumbles, arms flailing comically, before landing flat on her back somewhere at his feet, a low groan escaping her.

"Why did you have to do that?" she grumbles, humour gone. "I feel dizzy now."

"About time the moonshine caught up with you, Lil' Miss Firestarter," he grunts, because he's a little worse for wear himself, despite not drinking quite as much as Beth had. He guesses it has something to do with Beth being younger and able to deal with the hangover better, but dwelling on that makes him feel old so he pushes the thought away.

"Did you just call me a firestarter?" Beth asks from her space in the grass, and though he's not looking at her face he can hear the amused smile in her voice. "A twisted firestarter?"

"Do you ever give up?" he groans, and in seconds Beth's face is blocking his view of the sky, mouth set in a face-splitting grin, eyes shimmering with trouble.

"Nope," she says simply, before slapping him slightly on the top of his head and jumping to her feet, running through the tall blades of emmer wheat and barley. "Tag, you're it!" she shouts behind her, and despite the oncoming headache, Daryl doesn't have the heart to be angry with her for shouting so loudly – not even for shouting so loudly in a world of undead.

So it's with only some reluctance that he forces himself to spring to his feet and run after her. He can't help the grin that breaks across his face or the laughter bubbling in his chest, because he remembers how he had caught her, crouched on all fours in golden blades of grass taller than she was, ready to pounce. Remembers how he _will_ catch her.

She's nowhere in sight, but indents on the ground lead him towards her. She's smart, he knows – she knows he's a tracker, that he'll find her this way, so when he finds a fork in the tracks he knows that she has followed one only so far before doubling back and going the opposite way to confuse him. He takes the left tracks on sheer gut instinct and creeps slowly, heart pounding in his chest, adrenaline coursing through his veins. When he finds her crouched down in the grass, hiding, he darts out at once and catches her around the waist; she squeals and hits out half-heartedly at him as he lets her go.

"You suck at this," he says, and laughs at the indignant look that crosses her face. "My turn," he says as he turns on his heel, about to run, but Beth's hand darts out and tightens around his wrist before he can move.

Something in him freezes.

This is new. This isn't what happened. The real Daryl inside a thirty-something year old body frowns and turns back towards the blonde haired girl behind him. The sun has dipped in the sky, casting everything in soft hues of pink and orange, and that indignant look on Beth's face has been replaced by a soft smile.

"This was my favourite day," she says, and her tone is so wistful that he feels a strange sort of sadness settle in his chest.

"Don't say that," he tells her, shaking his head. "It's not over yet."

She only looks him in the eyes, the smile on her face dropping ever so slightly, before a short, melancholy laugh tumbles from her throat and her eyes shine with tears. "This was the day we started our game," she says, her voice catching on her words. "Our hide and seek game. Remember?"

"I – " He doesn't understand. Five minutes ago, it was noon. Five minutes ago, they were holding hands and laughing and running. Five minutes ago everything was fine. "Beth, I don't know what – "

"And pretty soon..." she trails off, before turning her back on him in one fluid motion, his crossbow in her hands, resting on the small curve of her shoulder as she shoots a walker expertly through the head. It falls upon the crisp leaves of the forest floor, and suddenly he realises they're in the woods again. "Hey, I'm gettin' pretty good at this!" she exclaims, happily, and a fond smile quirks on his lips with pride at the sight of her. She turns her head then, and he hadn't realised just how close he had moved towards her; her shoulders are flush against his chest, the tip of her nose brushing against the skin of his neck, eyelashes fluttering against his jaw. "And pretty soon," she says sadly, "You won't need me at all."

He's filled, suddenly, with a hopeless longing so intense that he feels the air torn from his lungs. "Don't say that," he breathes, and in one movement brings one calloused hand to cup the side of her face as the other pulls her to him tightly, arm encircling her waist and back. She's so close that if he leaned forward, just the slightest, barest inch more...

"Don't ever say that," he says as she stares up at him, blue eyes wide and sad in her beautiful face. "I always need you." His eyes feel hot despite the sudden chill in the air, nipping at the bare skin of his arms, but when he breathes in Beth smells like the woods again – like pine and fir and mulched leaves and the sun and all the stars in the sky. "I always need you," he whispers, and he closes that shrinking gap between them just as she pulls him down to meet her, crashing his mouth down upon hers. His lips move against Beth's and he hears a low, hard noise tear from his own throat just as he feels a breathy gasp escape her own. Her mouth opens and her tongue is hot and searing against his, her fingers holding his arms in a vice grip before gliding along his skin to nest in his hair, at the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his waist, his hips.

"I do need you," he breathes against her mouth, and _God_, he loves her. She wraps her arms around his neck tightly and kisses him deeply, just once more, and it's too fleeting because then she pulls away and laces her fingers through his.

"Come on," she says, smiling slightly, before she turns her back on him and leads him through the trees. Leaves and twigs crunch softly beneath their feet, and somewhere in the distance birds sing. His crossbow is on his own back again, a presence as familiar and steady as the sight of Beth's shoulders and the long, blonde hair covering them ahead of him.

"Where we goin'?" He asks, but a strange sense of foreboding is creeping upon him. The more the woods thin out, the warier he becomes, until finally, they reach it.

The edge of the trees, looking out towards a graveyard. The large, white house in the distance.

"Come on!" Beth exclaims, her eyes bright and shining with the promise of some shelter at last. She nudges his shoulder, and unthinkingly he bends down slightly just as she jumps on to his back, and with a grunt he hoists her up as he stands. Her arms wrap around his neck and he closes his eyes, takes just a moment to feel the weight of her against him.

"Do we have to?" He doesn't want to. They haven't been there yet, but he doesn't want to go there. They were happy between the trees, between the golden grass, between the sheets of their makeshift sleeping bags – they belong in the wild, he feels, so strongly in his heart that it could burst at the seams from wanting. Those weeks he spent in the woods and fields with Beth had been the happiest of his life.

And that house will take it all away in one night.

She doesn't say anything for a while, but when she does her words fill him with both relief and dread.

"No," she whispers in his ear. "No, I guess not. Not right now. But one day we have to. One day you have to let me go."

He clings to her tighter, and she nuzzles her face into the space between his neck and shoulder. "But not today?"

"Not today," she says, and he feels the shape of her lips smiling against the shell of his ear as he swiftly turns back – away from the graveyard where someone else's father lies, away from the house where one day she'll be taken from him, and back to the forests where he fell in love with her.

* * *

When Daryl looks in the mirror these days, he's met with the beginnings of crows feet in the corners of tired eyes, and a beard flecked with grey. His chest and arms still manage to fill out that old, worn leather vest, but there are days now when Daryl awakens in the morning, Carol sleeping restlessly beside him, and an ache settles in his arms and legs as he pulls himself up and rests his feet on the floor. There's a tired weight in his bones that doesn't ever quite disappear, until those moments when adrenaline kicks in and he's forced to move, to run, to fight. And afterwards, when it's over, there's a slight shake in his legs, a heartbeat one too quick, before he settles. He's growing old, he knows, and can't decide if he's pleasantly or sadly surprised by it.

They lost Alexandria four years ago; lost it to the napalm and the flames and the screams and the walkers, to Negan and The Saviors. They had moved to another place then, the Hilltop Colony, and they fought back. And they won, but at the same time, Daryl had lost so much. He'd never been so happy to see Maggie again in his life, to see her son – but when the war is over the sight of them makes him miss Glenn all the more. They lost others, of course, in that war – Abraham and Rosita had died fighting side by side, Sasha had gone out saving hostages trapped in Negan's base. And more, so many more. Countless. And though he feels each loss acutely, Daryl feels Glenn's absence all the more painfully. Glenn, who died so needlessly and never was able to lay eyes on his child, and to whom, it seemed at times, all the light left in the world had been drawn to. Because through it all, Glenn had remained unwaveringly kind. Glenn kept his humanity to the end, never failing to see the good in everything. And now with he and Beth gone, the world feels like a darker place for Daryl to wake up to each morning.

The clocks tick again in this _new_ new world, but Daryl measures time in the passage of the people around him; in Judith's near-adulthood, in Carl's growing authority, in the silver of Rick's hair and in Carol's declining health.

The last saddens him more than he has words for.

He thinks today might be a good day, because she slept soundly all through the night, woke when he did; smiled as she got dressed and didn't need to hold his hand as she walked downstairs to the dining hall.

He did, anyway. Hold her hand. She'd squeezed his back in response, and when they sat down at their usual table little Hershel had run towards them, dark hair flying wild, deep brown eyes shining with joy at the sight of her. And she'd been strong enough, today, to bundle Maggie and Glenn's five-year-old up in her arms and hoist him onto her knee and tickle the ever living hell out of him.

It had started with a vague nausea, an 'it'll pass, Daryl, I'm fine', to a lump, to a slow decline and finally, to this. To this stage where Daryl can only hope and pray that Carol will wake up today and smile at him and be well enough to eat breakfast with him, will be strong enough to play with little Hershel and take a walk outside with him. But those days are fewer and further between than ever, and sometimes, when Carol thinks he's not looking, she'll close her eyes for just a moment, and her smile will fall, and the slight lines of her face look deeper. And she looks so, so tired.

And there is nothing Daryl can do.

It scares him more than anything. He's not sure what's worse – to have someone ripped away from you suddenly, never to see the gold of her hair or the joy of her laughter ever again, or to lose a little of them every day, forever.

Daryl was thirty-seven or so years old when he lost Beth Greene, and now, at fifty-five, he's losing Carol Peletier too.

And he can't save her. It's not some walker shuffling towards her from the horizon that he can shoot down with an arrow; it's not a group of bad guys that he can beat down and kill for her. It's something worse, something both natural and unnatural all at once – the human body betraying itself. He remembers what a big deal things like cancer used to be back in the days before the dead began to rise and devour the living, and thinks now about how that cancer had simply rotted away on a shelf in Carol's body, out of sight and collecting dust, but growing, becoming heavier, weighing her down for years without her even realising. Daryl's not a doctor, and even if he was, the world isn't the same anymore. The medics at the Hilltop do their best – give her painkillers when it hurts too much, assess her progress – but they can't save her either. They can make her _comfortable. _But no-one can save her.

He tells Beth as much. The moon is big and bright in the sky one night when he can't sleep, and so he silently gets up and dressed, places the ghost of a kiss on Carol's sleeping head, and leaves the Hilltop. He nods to the on-duty guards and leaves through the back gate, out towards the woods. He's been out in this forest only a handful of times, but it doesn't matter – there's an old scent of fir and pine trees and mulched leaves and the sun and all the stars in the sky, somewhere ahead of him, so he follows it dutifully.

He walks for a long time, unthinking, taking out the occasional walker until the trees begin to thin out and –

And it's not golden, the sun isn't out – but it's silver-blonde in the moonlight. And it could be any old field, and he knows logically that it must be – that _that_ field is thousands and thousands of miles and about twenty years away from him, but he feels deep in his bones that he's supposed to be here. That that distinctly _Beth_ scent has led him to this familiar field for a reason.

He trudges through tall grass, naturally vigilant, but there are no walkers and he wonders if something in the universe is giving him just the tiniest break. Just for a little while. Just for tonight.

He flops down into the overgrowth, the ground cold but the grass providing an oddly satisfying sort of comfort. His eyes focus on thousands of stars in an inky black sky, and he takes a second to marvel at how much clearer the stars are now than they were before; how just a couple of decades without man-made toxic gas can give nature the chance to breathe again, and reclaim the world for her own.

"Hey," he says to the sky, and he talks aloud to Beth for hours, for the first time in eighteen years. Oh, he knows. He knows it's insane. He knows she can't hear him, and that he can't feel her anywhere in the world anymore, but _God_, she is _here_, to him, somehow. And he so badly just needs her to hear him. He's not naive enough to believe that the Beth in his dreams is really his Beth, but for just a few hours he lets himself hope. And so he tells Beth that he followed all that advice she gave him. That he fixed things with Maggie. That he let Carol in. He tells her that he's glad he did.

He talks to her about all the things that have happened; about their defeat of Negan, about losing Bob and Tyreese and the girls - Abraham and Rosita and Sasha. He tells Beth how much he misses Glenn, and asks her half-heartedly if he ever got his hat back when he got to Heaven. He's met with silence, and though he fully expected it he's saddened a little by it all the same.

"I can't save Carol, can I?" he whispers, only to be met with silence again. He carries on, anyway. "If it was just somethin' I could fight, I'd save her. If it was a walker or five or a hundred then I could save her. But it's not somethin' I can fight. I wasn't ever a smart guy 'fore all this started. I wasn't a doctor or nothin'." He smiles just a little at the nostalgia of this conversation, before telling Beth again, "I was jus' some redneck asshole, with an even bigger asshole for a brother." He's silent for a couple of seconds, lets the smile uncurl from the corners of his mouth, before going on. "I ain't smart like you. I don't get all those big bullshit words the guys in the doctor's office throw around. But I see their faces when they say 'em. And I see Carol's face, when she thinks I ain't lookin'. And I _know_."

He lets out a deep breath he hadn't realised he was holding. Every word is a weight he has carried for months, and in a way it comforts him to know that despite her physical absence, Beth is still the only one he can really talk to. That this bond they share transcends death itself.

"I can't save her," he whispers, and though it's a burden taken from his shoulders it's also his heart clenching in his chest, slowly, cripplingly. Saying it aloud makes it real, somehow, and he feels the raw truth of it seep through his skin, into his bones. "I can't save her," he gasps, a sob torn from his throat, and the sharp pin pricks of the stars above him blur into bright white lights; hot tears trail from the corners of his eyes to his ears and he feels the grimace of his mouth as a cry is ripped from his lungs. "I can't save her," he says, his voice a cracked whisper, as his shoulders shake with sobs. "I'll lose her too."

Daryl stays that way for a while. Eyes cast to the star spangled sky, face illuminated in the bright beam of the moon, back and legs and arms comfortably numb in the creeping cold. He thinks he might have fallen asleep like that, but when he opens his eyes the stars are still there, the sky is only a shade lighter, and the moon stares back at him.

"I can't save Carol," he tells Beth. "I know that. But I want ya to know that I _did_ save _you_." He imagines the slight frown on her face, the confused tilt of her head. "Not when it mattered. Not when it meant a damn. But after that. Every night after that. Loadsa' times, in thousands of different ways. Every night since they took you I lie awake, and I see it all again in my head, and I play things out just a lil' different each time. Do somethin' different. Be jus' a bit smarter, bit braver. Like, maybe I don't open that door at all. Maybe I just stay there in that kitchen with you, lookin' at me the way you were. Or maybe I'm 'bout to open the door, but see the walkers there, and leave it alone. Maybe I do it all the same, but I keep you with me and don't send you out on to that damn road. Or maybe – "

_Maybe I pull out my gun before you pull out those scissors. Maybe you don't do the stupid thing. Maybe you stop bein' so goddamn _good _and think of yourself, just once. Maybe you let Noah go back, and you don't leave me._

He can't say it, not out loud. He can't let her go just yet. He's talking to an empty space and he still, after all this time, can't let himself be angry with her.

"Or maybe," he continues, "Maybe all the maybes don't matter."

Because every night, when Daryl plays it all out, it doesn't matter what 'maybe' he picks. Beth lives. He saves her. Every night, he saves her. And sometimes, when he tells himself that, it almost makes up for that one night he didn't.

Beth doesn't answer. The stars stare back at him, burning and dying thousands and millions of light years away. The moon balances on some unseen perch above, some silent observer to their misery. All the sounds in the world hushed to nothing.

And yet, there's that voice in him that tells him to _hold on_. It yells _bullshit! _when he's lying to himself. It calls him an idiot when he does something reckless, and it tells him, gently but firmly, that there is still good in the world when his pain seems too much to bear. He can't see her in waking life, or feel the slight but solid grip of her fingers against his skin, but he hears her in the space between his conscience and his common sense. She's curled up in some corner of his soul, dormant, waking in him when he needs her.

In her own way, Beth does reply. Always.


	5. Chapter 5

**Lost In Dreaming**

_Chapter Five_

* * *

"Let me help."

Daryl blinks, registers the motion of his own hands, and looks down at the wood he's been carving with a knife for what seems forever.

"No," he says, and Beth raises her blonde eyebrows at him as she walks on the dirt road beside him. "I need to keep it away from you."

They're out in the countryside again. The woods flank them on either side, smelling of pine and fir and mulched leaves and earth – smelling like he and Beth, and he feels like he's home. The sun is beating down on them, the tarmac melting, walkers fried to the concrete.

He frowns at the sudden appearance of them and looks towards Beth on his left side, and she's wearing blue hospital scrubs. "Let me help you," she pleads as they walk through a large barbed wire fence. "It'll hurt someone."

He looks down at the thing in his hands. It's still just wood, but it glints strangely in the sun, like metal.

"Let it go."

He looks up to the source of the voice– _Beth! Beth!_ – that voice he'd know anywhere, the colour and shape of it. She's standing behind Carol's wheelchair, men in white coats behind her and cops and _that woman he can't bear to look at_. Beth's eyes, blue as summer skies, are boring into him. Her blonde hair is tied back into a ponytail. There are two gashes on her face – one on her forehead, one on her cheek – and the sight of her harmed makes his blood boil, but the sight of her _unharmed_ elicits something stronger. He feels pure, unadulterated joy at the sight of her there, alive and breathing right in front of him. He was so sure, when she'd been taken from him in that car, that half of his soul was out there, waiting for him – and now he's found it again, standing between cops and doctors, blue eyes wide in her beautiful face.

Except her eyes aren't wide. They're sad. They're _knowing._

They stand on the pristine white floor of a hospital corridor, Beth on one side, he and Rick and Carl and Noah and not Maggie on the other – but he's not angry at Maggie for it anymore, hasn't been for years, but _angry for what?_ He doesn't know yet.

"Please," Beth whispers, and her arm reaches out, slim fingers unfurling from her pale hand towards him, but she's too far away.

She's reaching for the gun.

That wooden thing in his hands feels cold – _metal_ – in his palm, and he looks down.

Of course it's a gun.

"It'll hurt someone," she says.

It has always, always been a gun.

His eyes fall on that dark haired woman, malice written in the cold grey of her eyes and in the stoic expression of her mouth. Faces come and go, but he has never forgotten this one. Blind rage seizes him and twists his grief into something dark and terrible; his arm is out in front of him before he can register what he's doing, gun aimed at the bitch's head. A snarl rips from his throat as he moves his finger just an inch on the trigger, before cool hands grip his own and he looks down, vision blurry with tears, into that face he had loved so unendingly.

"Move," he grits out, but she doesn't. She just looks up at him, this strange Beth who seems to know and understand so much, and it frustrates him. "Move!" he growls, and moves his hands to his shoulders to push her out of the way, but she doesn't budge; his hands slip through her like air and it horrifies him.

"Put it down, Daryl," she whispers. "It's hurting someone."

"No," he chokes, hatred strangling him. "Not you, it won't hurt you. Only _her_." He glares at the dark haired woman, standing still and stoic just a few paces away. "I can end this right now," he breathes as he looks down into those _blue blue blue_ eyes, begging Beth to understand. "I can stop it," he insists, and all at once he can see a future where Dawn Lerner dies and Beth lives, a world where they talk and laugh and fuck and sleep and die side by side; an eternity of his hand in hers and the sound of her voice being the first thing he hears when he wakes in the morning and the last when he closes his eyes at night. He sees a life where the shot didn't fire; where they finished a conversation started in the dim light of a funeral home kitchen, a conversation that ends in him pulling her towards him and kissing her until she moans; a life of diet coke and pigs feet and serious piggybacks.

But Daryl blinks and they are still in this hospital corridor. They're at the end. Piano keys sound in his head, and her slim fingers are gliding across the notes, but they're growing tired. He remembers every quaver, every note.

He feels the coda coming.

Beth shakes her head, blonde hair swaying from side to side at the movement. "Not me," she says, her voice thick with tears. "Not her," she says, eyes boring into his while she inclines her head gently towards the dark haired cop.

"Don't," he begins, because it begins to settle in his chest like a weight, because he knows, he's always known –

"_You_," she whispers, and tears spill from her eyes; something breaks in his chest at the sight of her. "It's hurting _you_."

He inhales sharply, breath rattling in his chest, and the real Daryl inside this thirty-something year old body snaps to life, hit with the full force of remembering. He remembers carrying her lifeless body in his arms, sobbing into her hair; he remembers burying her between two weeping willows; he remembers that not a night has gone by when he hasn't replayed this exact scene in his head over and over - watching her pull out those scissors, watching his girl do the stupid thing, watching her turn and face that cop, watching the gun fire off and thinking _if only if only if only if only_

"And what am I 'sposed to do?" he breathes, and he surges forward just as she does; she collides against him with her lean arms wrapped around his neck and her cold, tear-stained cheek against his throat; one of his wrapped around her shoulders and the other around her back, still gripping the gun. "It don't stop hurting. It never did."

"That gun never hurt me, Daryl," she says, her breath cool against the skin of his neck. "_I_ hurt me."

His arms fall around nothing, suddenly, and he looks up in alarm to see Beth behind that wheelchair again. Mouths are moving, but no sounds are coming out. Carol is being wheeled forward by one of the other cops, and Daryl feels himself step forward with one of their own hostage cops in exchange. Carol looks up at him and smiles, and he feels a rush of happiness at seeing her alive and safe again, and pushes the cop forward as his hands rest on the handles of her wheelchair and he takes her back to their group.

Rick takes the arm of their second hostage cop and walks her forward while the dark-haired bitch cop takes Beth's arm and leads her towards them – _yes_, he thinks, _come on, almost there_ – and suddenly Beth is beside him, bright, beautiful, strong Beth; his hand is on her shoulder, and something shifts back into place, as though his world had been torn in two and now the pieces have melded back together again, whole as they should have been all along, because she's here beside him and alive –

"Now I just need Noah."

Beth stiffens beside him and he reels back around. The bitch cop is standing in the middle of the hallway, face like marble. Rick moves forward and speaks, but no sound comes out. Daryl turns his face down to Beth, dread forming a tight knot in the pit of his stomach, only to see her looking back up at him calmly.

"Come on," he whispers, hand curling around her arm, begging with her. "We could run out of here right now, you and me. We can go back to the prison. We can go back to the moonshine shack, back to the field, to the woods, anywhere ya want. You and me." She looks up at him, eyes shining, and a sob tears from his throat when he says, "Please."

"What would it change?" she whispers back, and distantly he hears Noah say _it's okay, _and hears another Beth say _it's not okay_."Stop doing this, Daryl. Stop blaming yourself. Stop thinking of all the things you could have done that could have saved me. You didn't do this to me. _I_ did this to me." She turns her back on him then and runs to Noah, wraps her arms around him, and says, "I understood, Daryl. I really did. _I got it_." She turns her head to look back at him as she walks towards Dawn Lerner, pulling out those scissors and sticking them straight into the dark haired woman's chest. The gun goes off almost instantly, blood spraying the ceiling, but the Beth speaking to him doesn't fall to the ground. Everything in the background dissipates; Dawn Lerner and Noah and Rick and Carol forgotten.

"She was never going to let him go," Beth tells him forcefully. "And I needed him to live."

A sudden surge of anger courses through him at those words – except it's not sudden at all, because it's everything he felt when she pulled out those scissors in the first place, everything he felt when she tore through a woman's chest and got herself shot, all the rage and anger he'd felt at her when she'd chosen to leave him, but had never before allowed himself to feel towards her. How could he allow himself to harbour such anger, _hatred_, towards the girl who had taken his life and given it meaning?

"And I needed _you_ to live!" he snarls at her. "Didn't ya think of that? Didn't ya think of us? Your sister and me? Didn't ya think we were worth more to you than some kid you knew just a coupla' weeks?" His throat is raw from yelling, his eyes feel like sandpaper. "Didn't ya think of Judith, growin' up without ever rememberin' your face, or about your own nephew you'd never meet? Ever just _once_ think of yourself, instead of going and being all _good_ and _noble_ and doing such a fuckin' stupid thing?" he howls, and Beth reaches for him, his head now cradled in her hands, but he keeps screaming. "What about me?" he yells, eyes squeezed shut against his tears, but he feels her breath hitch in her throat as she pushes herself against him. "Didn't ya think of me?"

She sobs and he feels her shuddering gasp against the skin of his chest. "Every day," she breathes, and he opens his eyes and looks down at her, her beautiful face wet with tears. Her mouth is in a painful grimace, and he hasn't seen her look so torn since their fight outside the moonshine shack. "I thought of you every day since they took me. I tried so hard to get back to you. Don't you know that?" she sobs, and all at once his anger is gone and the sight of her like this kills him. His heart is breaking for what feels like the thousandth time since he met her and still he can't bring himself to stop loving her.

He wants to ask _then how could you do this? _but he already knows. Saving Noah had nothing to do with Noah. There was no foresight, no planning. No great plan. It had nothing to do with he himself, or Maggie, and everything to do with Beth and the person she was. Beth who asked him to help her take down a vandalised corpse, and who thought it was beautiful that someone had treated the dead with dignity. Beth who had held his hand at a father's grave and watched her own cut down before her eyes. She had done her best to make sure Noah found his father, because she had known she would never again find her own.

"You save someone because they need to be saved," Beth says, words muffled against his chest, "But also because you need to save them." She steps back and looks up at him.

The piano grows softer. The coda is closer than ever.

"You saved me too," he says gruffly, and she smirks.

"Of course, Mr. Dixon," she says, one eyebrow raised just slightly, eyes glittering with mirth. "And now look at you. You're doing just fine." Her smirk becomes a genuine smile then. "You don't need me anymore." He opens his mouth in protest, but she silences him with just a look. "You don't. Look just how far you've come. You're gonna be the last man standin', remember?"

Something's ending and it fills him with both despair and relief. There is so much he wants to tell her. He wants to finish that conversation started in the dim light of that kitchen he carried her into, and yet he doesn't. She was a beautiful, terrifying force in his life, and every time he drags her out of the past for inspection he feels like he cheapens the time they had together. Beth Greene took him from the ruins of a prison and instilled an unwavering faith in humanity in him; she took him from the ghost of a shell to one whole person effortlessly, and every time he wallows in her absence he's undoing her work; work he never thanked her for.

He opens his mouth to protest again, to tell her that of course he needs her, but there she is shooting that knowing look at him, that one he fell in love with that night sitting on the porch of a moonshine shack, and he closes his mouth against the lie.

"Let it go," she says, and the gun in his hand falls silently at his feet.

"Thank you," he whispers, and he moves forward to cup her face in his hands and press the softest kiss against her forehead.

The notes of the piano slow to an almost inaudible stop.

"Goodbye," he mouths against the skin of her temple, and her hands snakes it's way to his own to lace their fingers together, giving one firm squeeze, before she's gone.

Coda.

* * *

He finds his little girl sitting high on the branch of a weeping willow in a golden field a few miles west of the colony, long jean-clad legs crossed precariously beneath her. The sun beats down on him, grey hair plastered to his scalp with sweat, but Judith is sheltered in the shade of the branches, face stoic as she stares down intently at the book in her hands, deep brown eyes moving across the pages. Reddish blonde hair falls around her face like a curtain blocking away the outside world.

The sight of her like this, these days – relaxed, alone, unguarded – is so rare that Daryl feels bad for intruding. She works harder than almost anyone he's ever known, leading one of three colonies in the area of Georgia they've managed to regain for themselves. Jude's community is Reichenbach. He'd asked her once why she'd given it such a weird name, and she'd said cryptically that it was where she'd been reborn, and he hadn't asked for more. She listens to residents' concerns and makes sure the armoury is always stocked and makes sure their food supplies don't run out. She goes on runs and rebuilds fences and stands guard on the watchtower. She shouldn't do all the things she does, but she's never been much of a delegator. Daryl had once heard Maggie gently admonish her for it, to which Judith had simply replied, "If I can't stand with the people, then I shouldn't stand for them," in a tone that had left no room for argument.

And so Daryl feels bad, because his little girl is no longer a little girl anymore – never really got to be – and she doesn't get much time to just be by herself. But he's missed her a little lately and can't remember the last time they spoke without her face being fraught with concentration over some impending life or death situation, so he clears his throat, and brown eyes shift from printed black letters to peer down at him.

"Hey Daryl," she says. "Whatcha' doin'?"

He points his thumb to the familiar weight of the crossbow on his shoulder, and raises the other in his left hand for her to see. "Came ta' see if you felt like shootin' some arrows." _Ain't seen you in days_ is left unsaid, but Judith smiles knowingly.

"Sure," she says, carefully placing a bookmark in her page and closing it gently before jumping from the branch and landing crouched on her feet in one fluid motion. It's a funny character trait she's always had, Daryl's noticed – the way she treats books so reverently, as though they are valuable, prized objects to be cherished. And he knows, to her, they are.

"Whatcha' readin'?" he asks as they set off towards the woods. They have their own little place set up in a grove; a combat course of sorts, with makeshift targets scattered around, stationary and moving alike. The moving targets are just weights swinging from trees with bullseyes painted on them, but Daryl's happy with them all the same because Hershel made them when he was just ten, brown eyes shining beneath unruly black hair and grinning up at him with Glenn's smile.

She holds the book up for him to see, and he rolls his eyes. "That ol' thing again? I brought you back three new ones on the last run."

"I read them already," she says – _of course she has_, he thinks. "Besides," she shrugs, "these ones were always my favourites. You got me the first one when I was seven, remember?"

A fond smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, and he says, "I remember." He tests the weight of the name on his tongue before he says, "Beth loved them too."

Judith looks at him strangely, and he glances away from her and sets his sights ahead.

"Hershel's aunt, right? Maggie's sister? You never spoke about her before."

"It used to hurt too much," he says truthfully.

"And now?" she asks, her face unreadable but her voice tinged with curiosity.

"It still hurts," he replies, "but I'm okay."

There's silence for another minute or so, nothing but the occasional squawk of birds overhead and the sound of twigs crunching under boots as they approach the edge of trees.

"Did you love her?" Judith asks suddenly, and he answers honestly:

"Yes."

"And Aunt Carol?"

"I loved them both," Daryl says, "in different ways, with everything I had."

"What was she like?" Judith asks, and Daryl wonders if it's a question that's been on her mind already, because he hasn't seen her so interested in something since she was a little girl, asking him a thousand questions a minute about one thing or another.

"She was annoying," he says instantly, "and stubborn." Judith giggles, and he glances over at her, that baby Beth had held in her arms, older now than Beth had ever been, and says, "And she loved the hell out of you."

The smirk drops from Judith's face then, and there's something faraway in her expression. "What else?"

He exhales contentedly, trying to think of just how to describe Beth Greene. "She was a big reader too, like you are. She was smart, not in an in-your-face kinda way, but she noticed things about people, saw right through 'em, and she could say things that cut you right to the core without ever bein' mean. I ain't never met a person who could put herself in someone else's shoes the way she could. She knew you just by lookin' at you."

Judith's looking at him, something strangely wistful in the slight furrow of her eyebrows, and she asks, "And did you know her too?"

"Eventually," he answers. "But not at first. She wasn't much more than a kid when it all changed. She was naïve, and scared. She'd lived a pretty carefree existence up 'til then, with her dad and sister and mom and brother, and they all loved the hell out of her. I couldn't really connect with that, what with my asshole redneck family. We were so different we didn't have a whole lot to do with each other. Then you were born."

He glances at Judith and she's blinking back at him in surprise. "Me?"

He nods, and the smile that lifts the corners of his mouth makes him feel decades younger again. "Something changed in her when you were born. She stopped being that scared little girl and she stepped up. That was when we had the prison, and I barely ever saw you out of her arms. She became a fighter for you. Then the prison fell, and she'd lost you, and her dad was killed in front of her. She changed. I did too, but not in a good way."

Judith's looking at him intently, expressionless, but he knows the silent command in those brown eyes. _Go on._

"One thing you should know about Beth Greene," Daryl tells her, "if it's gotta be just one… it's that she always kept the world spinnin' when you were sure it had stopped. She saved me thousands of times, in thousands of different ways. She kept me going after we thought we'd lost everything. She changed my mind."

"Changed your mind about what?" Judith asks.

"About people. She made me believe in people. Even after she was gone, that one lesson kept me alive. It's how I made it this far."

The clearing opens out, and they step through the trees to the grove where their targets hang faithfully on trees and signposts and tyre swings. He hands Judith her own crossbow and hoists his from the sling across his back.

"You're sayin' there's a time you didn't see the good in everyone?" Judith asks, and he chuckles at the note of incredulity in her voice.

"That's right," he says.

"But you've been telling me there's good people in the world since before I could fire a gun," she says through her surprised smile, shaking her head in disbelief. "Always givin' me speeches about doin' the right thing."

"Yeah, I know," he laughs, because it's absurd to him, too, how different he was as a younger man pre-Beth Green. "She did that to me. She was the goodest person I ever knew. She saved you 'cause you needed to be saved, but also 'cause she needed to be the one to save you."

Judith smiles at him as she hoists the crossbow on to her shoulder, before turning to a target some twenty feet away and pulling an arrow level to her eye. She pulls back a finger, feels the tension in the bow, before she relaxes the muscles in her arms and lets the crossbow fall to her side. She looks up at him, and there's something small and sad in her voice when she tells him,

"I'm sorry I don't remember her."

Something in his throat clenches, but he reaches for her to put an arm around her shoulders and press a kiss against the top of her head. "I'm sorry too."

It's some time later, after target practice and during the walk through a golden field back to the colony, that Judith decides to ask Daryl more questions.

"What's your first memory, Daryl?"

He shifts the weight of the crossbow slightly, uncomfortably, as the sun beats down on them from a cool orange sky. "First thing I remember?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno," he says, and he realises he really doesn't know. "I 'member shapes and colours blurred together. Someone screamin'." Judith looks up at him from his side, and he shrugs. "Ain't nothin' if you lived in my house. There was always someone screamin'."

"Even before walkers?" she asks, and it occurs to him very suddenly, as it often sometimes does, that Judith has never lived in a world without walkers, without death and fear and constant vigilance, and that maybe they're more alike than Daryl ever realised.

"Even before walkers," he nods. "World's always been scary, Lil' Ass Kicker. The hardest thing in this world is to live in it."

She seems to consider this for a few moments, and he asks, "What about you? What's the first thing you remember?"

Judith squints her eyes as though looking for something far off in the distance, a wistful smile on her face, and answers, "Someone singin'.

* * *

(A/N: This is the last chapter! Possibly. This wasn't the original ending and there's still space for me to write the actual ending if I choose too. It would be much Bethylier (is that a word?). Please feel free to review and let me know if you liked it. I've loved writing this story and you're all gems, even you not-so-nice anti-Carolers. Love!)


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